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The licensing program for MP3-related patents has been terminated

iis.fraunhofer.de

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Re: The licensing program for MP3-related patents has been terminated

#2

Post by freehunter »

The relevant quote:

>On April 23, 2017, Technicolor's mp3 licensing program for certain mp3 related patents and software of Technicolor and Fraunhofer IIS has been terminated.

Does this mean that you can't get a license for MP3 anymore, or are they trying to say you don't need a license anymore? Are they opening it up, or are they shutting it down?

Re: The licensing program for MP3-related patents has been terminated

#3

Post by vetinari »

freehunter wrote: post #2

The relevant quote: >On April 23, 2017, Technicolor's mp3 licensing program for certain mp3 related patents and software of Technicolor and Fraunhofer IIS has been terminated. Does this mean that you can't get a license for MP3 anymore, or are they trying to say you don't need a license anymore? Are they opening it up, or are they shutting it down?

You don't need licensing for mp3 decoding anymore. All the patents have expired. Even Fedora ships mp3 decoder now.

There are still patents left for mp3 encoding though.

Re: The licensing program for MP3-related patents has been terminated

#4

Post by poizan42 »

freehunter wrote: post #2

The relevant quote: >On April 23, 2017, Technicolor's mp3 licensing program for certain mp3 related patents and software of Technicolor and Fraunhofer IIS has been terminated. Does this mean that you can't get a license for MP3 anymore, or are they trying to say you don't need a license anymore? Are they opening it up, or are they shutting it down?

The very last patent expired 16 April 2017, so there wouldn't be any point in licensing expired patents.

Re: The licensing program for MP3-related patents has been terminated

#5

Post by patentsexp88 »

freehunter wrote: post #2

The relevant quote: >On April 23, 2017, Technicolor's mp3 licensing program for certain mp3 related patents and software of Technicolor and Fraunhofer IIS has been terminated. Does this mean that you can't get a license for MP3 anymore, or are they trying to say you don't need a license anymore? Are they opening it up, or are they shutting it down?

Some patents expired and no longer require license:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MP3#Licensing.2C_ownership_and...

Re: The licensing program for MP3-related patents has been terminated

#6

Post by Macha »

freehunter wrote: post #2

The relevant quote: >On April 23, 2017, Technicolor's mp3 licensing program for certain mp3 related patents and software of Technicolor and Fraunhofer IIS has been terminated. Does this mean that you can't get a license for MP3 anymore, or are they trying to say you don't need a license anymore? Are they opening it up, or are they shutting it down?

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/MP3

Looks like the parents have expired as of 2 weeks ago

Re: The licensing program for MP3-related patents has been terminated

#7

Post by [deleted] »

freehunter wrote: post #2

The relevant quote: >On April 23, 2017, Technicolor's mp3 licensing program for certain mp3 related patents and software of Technicolor and Fraunhofer IIS has been terminated. Does this mean that you can't get a license for MP3 anymore, or are they trying to say you don't need a license anymore? Are they opening it up, or are they shutting it down?

[deleted]

Re: The licensing program for MP3-related patents has been terminated

#8

Post by derefr »

So, now that the "but MP3 is patent-encumbered" consideration is finally dead-ish, what's the new balance on the debate between shipping {MP3, MP4-AAC, MKV-Vorbis, MKV-Opus} as music/SFX assets in software products?

Also, with the two sub-considerations:

• on mobile, where hardware decoding exists for only some codecs;

• on the web, where the audio APIs only accept some of these formats/codecs.

Re: The licensing program for MP3-related patents has been terminated

#9

Post by bartkmq »

freehunter wrote: post #2

The relevant quote: >On April 23, 2017, Technicolor's mp3 licensing program for certain mp3 related patents and software of Technicolor and Fraunhofer IIS has been terminated. Does this mean that you can't get a license for MP3 anymore, or are they trying to say you don't need a license anymore? Are they opening it up, or are they shutting it down?

I think you do not need one anymore. The patent were filled in 1997, that's now 20 years ago.

See: https://madfileformatscience.garymcgath.com/2016/0/05/mp3pat...

The last two patents seem to be related to an encode optimization and are not needed to write a decoder.

Which means it is possible now to include an MP3 decoder in GNU/Linux distros, etc. without paying the $2,500 fee.

Re: The licensing program for MP3-related patents has been terminated

#10

Post by poizan42 »

vetinari wrote: post #3
freehunter wrote: post #2

The relevant quote: >On April 23, 2017, Technicolor's mp3 licensing program for certain mp3 related patents and software of Technicolor and Fraunhofer IIS has been terminated. Does this mean that you can't get a license for MP3 anymore, or are they trying to say you don't need a license anymore? Are they opening it up, or are they shutting it down?

You don't need licensing for mp3 decoding anymore. All the patents have expired. Even Fedora ships mp3 decoder now. There are still patents left for mp3 encoding though.

The last known decoding patent expired in 2015. That last known patent covering mp3 at all expired two weeks ago.

Edit: apparently there are two patents left in relations to encoder optimizations[0] not mentioned on the wikipedia pages. Those are probably irrelevant to modern encoders on modern computers.

[0]: https://madfileformatscience.garymcgath.com/2016/0/05/mp3pat...

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